Mickey Mouse on a Secret Mission
|series = Mickey Mouse |image = Mickey mouse secret mission sample panel.jpg |writer = Floyd Gottfredson |artist = Floyd Gottfredson |date = July 19-October 23, 1943 |caption = A sample panel }} "Mickey Mouse on a Secret Mission" is a storyline from the Mickey Mouse newspaper comic strip that ran from July 19 through October 23, 1943. Plot One day, Mickey reads something in the want ads of the newspaper: a young man needed for service to his country and that should he accept, he must go to a concert in a park. Mickey decides to go. Once there, however, he is overtaken and spirited away by two Nazi agents, who put him on a hijacked bus and take him to an underground lair, the entrance to which is activated by milking a mechanical cow. Once in their lair, however, Mickey tries to resist, but is overtaken again. However, when a door before them opens, it is revealed to him that they were not Nazi agents at all, but Allied agents working for the American government. It turns out that Mickey has been chosen by someone named "Candidate Seven" for a desperate mission for his country. Mickey accepts the mission, but asks why they would pick him, an average little guy. Candidate Seven explains that the Nazis are supermen, so the Americans want to show that "the average American guy can lick three times his weight in supermen." Thereafter, Mickey is put through a rigorous examination process. First, he is rigged up to a "reaction machine", which is shown to have a picture of Hitler on the screen. Mickey's reaction is hatred for the Fuhrer, so much so that he punches the machine, replacing the picture on the screen with another, this one of a sexy female mouse, which he shows more approval of. The doctor labels all of Mickey's reactions as "average". Next, the doctor feeds Mickey some "special foods" to build him up, but Mickey is uncertain about the foods, which are basically small but "super-charged vitamins" such as thermosines. Then, the doctor puts Mickey into a training device that spins around very fast in order to help Mickey fall asleep. Mickey's process continues: he is clobbered by a boxing gorilla; he is put on a spinning wheel to help with his orientation; he studies the German language while clinging to monkey bars; he has to face several lions (and one tiger) as an interesting way of relaxing under hazardous conditions; and he is put through a wind tunnel to help him move faster than any inanimate object. The last test involves Mickey being shot out of a cannon and into a solid wall, but he is assured that he will survive (as seen by some calculations that the doctor made). The cannon fires and Mickey hits the wall. He is dazed and his feet hurt, but he survives. Thus, Candidate Seven, whose real name is revealed to be Douglas Heed-Martin, gives Mickey his secret mission. Heed-Martin is a manufacturer of planes, and the underground lair is an underground factory, where they make secret weapons, including a nozzle gun that fires a substance made of tar and chewing gun that can stop a tank in its tracks, and several kinds of gases, including a laughing gas and another made with Terpsichorean dioxide, which makes everyone dance themselves into exhaustion. Then Heed-Martin reveals to Mickey his secret mission. Behind a locked door lies a new kind of plane called "The Bat", which has unlimited range through a source of atomic power. It is capable of going speeds that no one knows about, which was why Mickey went through such a rigorous examination process, so he, too, became a person of superior power. Heed-Martin tells Mickey that although he created The Bat, no one could tame it, so that job falls to Mickey. Heed-Martin puts Mickey in the cockpit and elevates the plane onto the runway, assuring him it will not be too difficult, as it can take off, land, and navigate itself. All Mickey has to do is give voice commands and it will do the rest. All the while, Mickey is understandably nervous about this, but Heed-Martin has a picture of a hummingbird placed in the plane to show how fast Mickey is going; if it keels over, he is going too fast. With that, Mickey takes off in The Bat. Trivia *Douglas Heed-Martin's name and profession as manufacturer of planes is a reference to the Douglas Aircraft Company and the Glenn L. Martin Company, both of which were American aerospace manufacturers which produced aircraft during World War II. *Pete's role as a Nazi spy in this comic is a sharp contrast from his role in the concurrent wartime cartoons, where he appears as the antagonistic Army superior of Donald Duck, but one who is still on the side of the Allies. Category:Mickey Mouse comic stories